


Iron Dad: Just A Guy In A Suit Getting Hurt and Trying To Save His Kid

by FBIEpidemic



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Hurt Tony Stark, Iron Dad, Parent Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-05 08:18:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17915210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FBIEpidemic/pseuds/FBIEpidemic
Summary: Whump Stories for each day of the week





	1. Sunday

Pepper gets the transmission on a Sunday. 

When she was younger, tall enough to pass as nine but still too young to walk across the street without holding her father’s hand, she used to go to church. She can remember hymnal books and the black bibles that they kept on each pew. She would stack two or three up and watch the preacher pace as he talked. It was important to her to see him as he talked, what he said never mattered. 

She can, however, recall only one thing: Sunday is a holy day. As she got older, as the church trips got more sparse and less important, she became unable to remember anything other than that. Sunday’s are good days. Sunday is for the higher powers, they are days of rest. They’re supposed to be good. 

_“When you find this recording, don’t feel bad about this. Part of the journey is the end.”_

Yet, she can’t think of a single Sunday where things seemed to be ‘holy’ or ‘good’. Sunday’s have been full of hospital visit, waiting for Tony to come home, and arguing before she has to leave for a meeting with the Stark Industries where she’s undermined by a group of older white men who all think she got her position because she’s screwing Tony.

_“When I drift off, I’ll dream of you. Always you.”_

It had been some time now but she’d flown in his suits. He’d had her practice after the Killian incident. He wanted to make sure she could get further away if trouble ever came again and it always comes again. 

In the basement, under the passcode, ‘Pepperony<3’ is a suit that he’d made. He was so proud to drag her down to his garage, covered in sweat, motor oil, and what looked like a little bit of blood, and show her. 

How he’d taken a measurement of her breast and calculated it so that the suit would fit her, escapes her but it fit and it fit well. But, after that day she’d never used it again. 

_“I had a dream about it, it was so real.”_

Now, she’s sitting on the couch, one of his helmets cradled to her chest, listening to him talk. She should have told him the truth. She shouldn’t have poked back and just once not played into his hand, played his little game. Instead, she told him no. Told him that the pseudo-reactor on his chest made it clear that he wasn’t ready. When she’d seen him with Peter. She knew he was ready and so is she and now-

“Ms. Potts?” Friday startles her, after sitting in silence for a week now she’d gotten used to it. “Would you like to engage protocol ‘Kick Tony Stark’s Ass’?”

Pepper smiles as she remembers the argument that led up to that protocol. 

She told him she was tired of him running off to save the world while she sat in their living room, in one of his tattered band t-shirts, waiting for news on rather or not he was coming home.

_“Well, to be fair, I do always come home.”_

She knows that humor is how he copes, that years of ‘cowboying up’ had destroyed many aspects of his mental health but it’s hard to not get mad. So he took her to the garage and they made her his back-up because she still can’t bring herself to trust the others.

“Engage the protocol, Friday, and get my suit.”

 

“Dying makes you look like shit, Stark.” Nebula sits across the ship from Tony, watching him tremble in his tank top. 

She was interested in his ability to mask his troubles, the things that she had to earn his trust to find out, and the things that a dying man has to tell. Stark turned out to be very interesting and terrifyingly relatable. 

Before she found some of Quill’s oxygen masks in the motor room, he’d been open with her. His death was hours away and he’d grown fond of her. He told her about Afganistan, waking up during surgery with someone else’s hand moving his organs around, the PTSD that he suffers from the body modification that was saving his life. 

Now, he’s surviving from the oxygen masks that Quill never equipped into his helmet.

He smiles at her though. 

She can’t understand how. To face the horrors he’s seen, felt, caused and she understands because so many of these things she’s felt too and yet he smiles. 

His left hand will tremble but he still smiles to tell her about the son he lost the day that Thanos won. How the boy named Peter saved his life and stopped him walking off the side of Stark Industries. 

Suicide. Stark, who smiles as he lays dying, who taught her how to fly Quill’s now dead plane, who patched her up when she burned her arm welding, was going to kill himself. Just the way that he told her, as if it wouldn't have really mattered and she feels awful because he’s dying, she can’t help, and she has to be the last thing that he sees.

“Stark!”

The trembling stopped. His left hand has stopped moving for the first time since she’d known him and before she can think about actual tears are coming to her eyes and she fights her way to Tony’s still body.

He’s warm. So much warmer than she expected. 

She’d made fun of Gamora for loving a human, for falling for such an easily killable species and yet as she holds Stark’s body she sobs. She cries for Peter, for the woman Tony called for in his nightmare riddled sleep, and for the only friend she’s ever had.

“Smurf..” she can feel a rough hand touch her back, gently just barely there. She pulls back from him just enough to see his hardly open eyes. “ ‘s okay. I just-I got a little dizzy.”

She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Good,” she replies gruffly,” your stupid human body is heavy. I’m not looking forward to tossing you out of the ship.” 

He offers her a small smile in form of a comment. 

“And I’ve forgotten which peddle is the gas, so you’ll simply have to survive a little longer. Otherwise, neither of us are getting to your home.” 

Tony smiles, a small chuckle bubbling it’s way up before it’s stifled out by hoarse coughing. Nebula presses the oxygen closer to Tony’s face, feeble humans. 

Gamora really must be insane, Nebula gets one human and he’s a disaster, and Gamora loves all of them. What goes through her sisters head? It’s a good thing they’re not related.

“Breath you stupid human,” Nebula mumbles glaring at Tony as he writhes and gasps for air. “I’ll go get another mask.”

She moves to leave but he grabs her arm and shakes his head,” n-no. Don’t.” He sags back, all his energy sapped by the simple movement,” don’t.”

When they’d gotten off of Titan there Tony talked a lot. Which is odd because in the ten minutes that it took to help him walk to Quill’s ship he hadn’t said a single word and she’d known from their little time on Titan that the man never shuts up.

But that was when Peter was there.

She has only two references to what Peter looks like. One is her memory, the image of a boy with a bright smile and brown eyes. The second is the picture that Tony had pulled from seemingly nowhere after he made a poorly timed joke about wearing clothes under the suit. She hasn’t managed a good look at the photo, even now he clinches it in his right hand. 

And then there’s the woman. Tony calls out to her in his sleep, back when he slept and she didn’t wonder if she’d find him dead when she went to check on him later. Whoever the woman is, Nebula knows that Tony leaves the woman a fortune. Back when the ship had oxygen and Tony had ‘good’ days, he would explain to Nebula how the Earth worked.

The woman gets a ‘life insurance’ check the size of ‘Montana’ when Tony dies, at least that’s what Tony had said. Nebula still isn’t sure she understands how money can be ‘backed up’ by something. 

Nebula wonders how another human measures human lives. How the woman Tony seems to love measures him. 

“Tony?” She looks down at their joined hands and glances at his face. He’s more grey than dirty now. Ashy, perhaps. “Ow,” she tries to pull her hand away but stops when she realizes that he’s not breathing. “Tony? Tony? No. No, come on. This is not funny. You’ve done this once and I did not find it humorous!”

He wriths, his chest coming off of the floor and twisting as he coughs out blood. His face is red now as his hands come up to his chest, pulling at his tanktop and tearing the weakened material.

She remembers what he’d told her about what happens he finally ran out of oxygen. Of course, she’d rolled her eyes but listened because it seemed important to him.

So she does as he told her and pulls his arms to his chest, pinning to him her chest to stop him from hurting himself any further.

He’d explained to her that it would take anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes for this body to stop functioning. That he would cough blood if he ruptured his blood vessels and that given his blood pressure problems and past medical experiences that would happen. 

She can’t do anything for him in this portion of their trip. From here, she’s alone until she touches down on Earth and then she’s to offer them the last written will and testimony of Anthony Edward Stark. 

To the woman, Nebula will lie. The woman is not to know of Tony’s death until the paramedics have taken his body away. He wishes for the woman not to see him. 

_“It’s a pride thing.”_

 

“JAR- Friday?” 

The nightmares that Tony suffered from after New York was terrifying. Whatever he felt in space, whatever he saw it nearly killed him and for a long time she genuinely thought that if some mission didn’t kill him he’d end it himself. It’s a fear she lived with, spending long nights turning over in their bed and having to rationalize that Tony was only in the garage and not sitting in their bathtub with blood running down his wrist or-

“Ms. Potts,” Friday says and Pepper sees what she’s being shown and hope floods her heart. She might be here in time. 

“Find me a way in, Friday.” 

_“We’re gonna have a nice dinner tonight, show off this Harry Winston. Right?”_

Her Tony, the man who wears sunglasses to hide his puppy dog brown eyes that always broadcast his emotions, who cries in the shower, who builds lego masterpieces with some kid from Queens just because, is not moving. He’s laying in the arms of some blue alien who seems as devastated as Pepper feels.

“Ms. Potts, I would not recommend removing the Iron Bitch helmet. The atmosphere aboard this ship is too thin for you to breathe.”

Pepper tries not to think too much about what that means. Instead, trying to focus her mind on the fact that Tony had, probably during one of his many sleepless nights, renamed her suit the ‘Iron Bitch’. Only he’d think that was funny and for the moment she needs to think about finding him on this ship and giving him a piece of her mind.

Until she finds the blue woman, more metal than blue, with tears streaming down her face. Still, she holds a gun in her hand, steady, poised to kill.

“Woah!” Pepper holds her hands up, fumbling when repulsers start to whine as they hear up. “Friday!” They stop immediately but the blue woman does not lower her weapon.

“What,” Nebula says, her voice trembling,” do you want?”

Pepper stands for a moment, her mouth opening and shutting,” uh, I got a signal. My-My fiance, Tony, I was looking for him.”

Nebula drops the weapon, letting it fall to her thigh with her hand. She looks away from Pepper, in the direction of a darker part of the ship,” you’re too late.” Nebula turns her back on Pepper, even though all of her training and scars has told her that this particular move ends in pain. Yet, she can’t bring herself to care.

Her sister is dead.

Tony is dead. 

She’s got no one else now.

“W-What do you mean? I-I can’t be too late. It hasn’t even been a day, I got the message-”

Nebula turns around quickly, making Pepper takes several steps back,” he’s dead! Tony? He didn’t even run out of oxygen, he-he just didn’t want to keep fighting the inevitable.” Nebula drags her fist across her eyes,” he’s dead and who are you to ask anyway?”

“P-Pepper.”

Nebula stops, Peter and… the other one. The one in the picture, the one- “The one he was going to marry?”

Pepper nods, glad that the helmet hides the tears that are now streaming down her face because she’s supposed to be calm collected and professional and instead she’s trying not to sob in a suit made by her dead fiance. 

“I,” Nebula looks back to the corner and this time Pepper starts to walk forwards but Nebula steps in the way. “I can’t let you go over there. Tony-”

To hell with what Tony wants, ever since she’d met him he’s one irrational, heartfelt decision after another. Birthday parties to hide his declines in health. Locking the garage to hide to hide the fact that he’s panicking or building a suit of armors os that he can protect the whole world. He means well, truly, but he’s a mess. 

“Oh God,” for years now she’s laid by his side. Felt the shifts in their bed as he rolled and twist with each coming nightmare. She’s coached him through breathing, calmed him down when she was certain she was going to watch him self-destruct before her eyes. 

Never, not once, has she ever seen him lay or be this still.

“Tony,” she reaches out, to touch him but pulls away at the last second. He doesn’t look like himself. His entire body, so still, and paler than he’s ever been before. She’s no longer sure that the man before her is Tony.

Her Tony is full of life. He’s got ideas that he strings together with impossible certainties. Love and tenderness hidden behind sunglasses that he tents impossible colors. His left hand that’s caught in a constant tremble that he’s stopped trying to fix. Her Tony is full of life and even in sleep moves. 

This is not Tony.

“Ms. Potts, I’ve run diagnoses. I am ejecting a part of the suit, a portion sir created for this purpose, which will go fix a needed engine and filtration problem. If my calculations are correct, given that sirs algorithms always are, the ship should be up within an hour.”

Pepper can hear the hiss of release,” Friday?”

“I’m here, Ms. Potts.”

“Is… Can I do… Is he dead?”

Pepper watches the screen before her eyes map out his body, numbers flashing, letters coming and disappearing but meaning nothing to her.

“Sir, is, in fact, dead. Additional measures could successfully bring back cardiac rhythm.”

Lights flood the ship and Nebula gasps,” what the hell did you do?”

Friday sounds through the ship,” if you’ll both lend me your attention, the steps I have prepared for sirs revival and survival will require both your attention.”

 

 

“What did he tell you?” When Friday was able to restore the ships function, something about replacing the engine with the nanotechnology that Tony had started to repair the engine with, Pepper was able to take her helmet off. Giving Nebula her first real look at Pepper and it wasn’t hard to learn why Tony loved her so much.

The pair sit at the front of the ship, listening to the whistle of the makeshift medical gear breathe for Tony. In the end, it was not their ability to listen to Friday’s helpful steps but their ability to work with one another.

They’d both worked with Tony, never for Tony, and certainly not together.

“What I told you about Peter,” Nebula offers, looking out into the passing space. “We just worked. He wanted to get home. He wanted…” Nebula swallows thickly, hating the emotions that Tony makes her feel. For the longest time, the only person who loved her was Gamora. Even then, it was not the right type of love. It took half of the Earth being taken for someone to love her. 

Pepper nods, understand Tony enough to know. “How long?”

Nebula looks away from the window, eyes meeting Pepper's for a long minute. “He stopped struggling after two minutes. He was dead by the fifth minute.” Nebula stands from her chair, excusing herself with a small nod.

Pepper follows, both aiming to go back to the tail end of the plane where Tony is.

“I’m sorry.”

Pepper can’t identify exactly what it is that she sees in Nebula’s eyes but it shines like the blood of a wounded animal and for a moment, Pepper thinks she’s seen Tony give her that look.

“Someone had to be here.”

 

 

“Nebula!”

Landing on Earth was not how Pepper had thought it would go. She’d seen Tony pilot bigger ships and he made it look easy and between herself and Nebula it was a disaster. Now, she’s standing in front of five Avengers that she actually knows and a raccoon pointing a gun at Nebula.

Which is something she never expected to have to think?

“Rocket!” Steve, who seems a lot better since he and Tony fought, calls the raccoon off, at least, she can assume that he’s the raccoon. “Lower your weapon.”

“Who are you to tell me what to do, Rogers? You’re-”

Thor, who Pepper almost doesn’t recognize without the long blond hair, puts a hand on the raccoon's shoulder. “Rabbit, Ms. Potts is married to the man of iron, she wishes to do no harm. You can lower your weapon.”

“It ain’t her that I’m pointing at!”

Nebula steps forward, pressing against Pepper’s arm when the older woman attempts to stop her,” you stupid animal!”

In a flash, weapons are drawn but Rhodey steps in the middles, his Iron Patriot suit fixing guns on all of them,” Hey! Put them down.”

It takes them a moment but even Rocket points his gun to the dirt.

“Pep,” Rhodey turns to Pepper, guns disappearing,” tell me you’ve got Tony.”

Pepper nods, pointing into the ship. She nods somberly,” I have him, I just don’t know if I got there in time.”

 

Tony Stark, in the entirety of his life, has always had something to say. To say that any of the Avengers were surprised to find a very detailed letter, in which was a spectacularly set up plan on how to take down Thanos. Tony seemed to have planned for everything. Things that Steve hadn’t even thought could happen and even though they are severely crippled in manpower, Steve has the outrageous idea to follow the plan.

“He was dying when he came up with this plan. You can’t really think this could work.”

Bruce shakes his head,” he’s still Tony though, he’s the smartest-” Bruce locks eyes with Shuri,” the second smartest person I’ve ever meet.”

“He made a suit of armor, in a cave, with bomb scraps.” Rhodey glances at Pepper, wondering just how it is that she’s managing because tony is his best friend and he feels like his worlds falling apart. Pepper is engaged to marry, she’s got her perfect wedding all planned out. It’s in the fridge. 

She’d just picked the perfect dress a week ago.

Shuri clicks her tongue, obviously thinking her response through,” I like it.” The teen surprises them all, it’s easy to forget that she’s there. She crosses her arms,” he’s got balls. It’s not impossible, easier if he was here, Stark is… he’s brilliant for an American, for anyone not from Wakanda.” She looks at Pepper, the grace taught to her as princess slipping out,” I have a lot to learn from a man like Stark.”

She moves to some of her equipment, starting it up with a flick of her wrist,” as he would me.” 

Steve looks over the crowd, looking at Natasha now,” are we settled then?”

Natasha gives a small nod of her head.

Rocket cocks his gun and nods his head, “let’s go beat this purple fuck’s ass.” 

 

 

“Bucky!”

Names. Everyone’s names being called and yet Peter stands alone. 

A green woman and Peter from space hug. 

Captain America hugs Bucky and Peter is glad for them but… where’s Mr. Stark and Aunt May? 

“Groot!”

Even the tree.

He stumbles away from the other’s suddenly self-conscious about being alone. It’s not that hard to get away with them but before he has a chance to slip away someone grabs his arm,” found you.”

For a solid, terrifying, hopeful moment Peter expects to turn around and find Mr. Stark.

“Mr. Rhodey,” he can’t help that his face falls. 

“No time to explain, we need you.”

Mr. Rhodey doesn’t walk that fast but Peter notices he’s gotten better at walking with the braces. Peter’s impressed, he’d had to wear them for an hour or two when Mr. Stark was making a new improved set and it was hard then with working legs. 

“Mr. Stark!”

They hadn’t forgotten him. 

Peter stops, suddenly not sure and afraid. They hadn’t forgotten him, there was just something more pressing happening and from the looks… Peter isn’t sure why they need him.

A girl, about his age, is standing on one of Tony’s side talking to him softly. Pepper is on Tony’s other side, seeming to be the only thing that’s keeping Tony on his feet. 

“Come on, Iron Man.” The girl seems like she means well but Tony’s knee buckles and Happy is right behind them in a flash, sliding a wheelchair underneath Tony before anyone even has to ask. 

“I-I’m sorry.” 

The girl slips an oxygen mask over his face,” don’t worry about it, Stark.” 

“P-Peter?” Tony had looked away from the girl to see Peter in the doorway.

Peter runs forward, needing only one thing. He’s at his goal in a flash, arms wrapped around his mentor and holding tight. 

“So this is Peter.”

Peter opens an eye to peek at the girl, she’s tilting her head at him. 

“So, when you get bit by radioactive spiders do you always steal costume ideas from Vines?”

Peter’s attention slips, he lets go of Tony and tries to explain himself. He doesn’t get past opening his mouth before the girl interrupts-

“It’s Wednesday my dudes?”

Together they shriek, heads tilted up and laughter breaking up their calls.

“Kids,” Tony grumbles leaning onto the back of the wheelchair. Relaxing for the first time in a long time. 

“Shuri?”

The girl looks away from Peter, her smile fading. When her gaze falls on the man standing in the doorway tears fill her eyes,” brother!”

It takes a while for things to calm down and even when they’re ‘calm’ energy buzzes through the rooms. No one wants to let go of the loved ones they’ve only just gotten back. It seems like only then that Peter can breathe, everything that he’s been caught up on just melts away.

They’re still in the… this hospital of sorts. Shuri, the girl, promises Peter that she can fix Tony.

Tony doesn’t say much but Rhodey lets him know about things. Peter had to school his features before he was allowed back into Tony’s room. 

He’d died, on the ship, and Peter thought that was bad enough. Then Rhodey told him about what the oxygen had done, how Tony had suffocated slowly, and how now his brain is scrambling to understand how to work again. 

Now, Peter sits on the couch beside Tony, his head on the older man’s chest. He doesn’t think about the weak limbs, how the oxygen mask is sending a cool breeze down the back of his shirt. He thinks about Tony’s soft snores, about how good it felt to laugh with Shuri, and how happy Pepper was to see him.

When he closes his eyes, when he drifts to sleep, he dreams of Aunt May. The world is safe again and for the first time in what feels like ages, Peter relaxes into his mentor's arms and sleeps.


	2. Monday

It’s Monday, Peter's head is sinking. 

Ned leans around his best friend, grimacing when he sees Peter's closed eyes. He'd spent all week with Mr. Stark and Ned knows that on those days Peter sleeps less. He doesn't spend all night up in the lab or even doing homework. Instead of sleeping all night or even most of the night, he waits up until he hears Tony wake himself up with a nightmare and then he sleeps. Only after he’s certain that Tony is back in bed and sleeping.

Except this week was nothing like any of the other weeks. Peter didn’t bounce between Avengers, learning medical tricks from Bruce, eating Steve's wonderful cooking, or listen to scary stories with Clint and Natasha.

He sat in the hospital. 

“Holy Shit.”

The whole class turns to a girl, front row. Ned bites his lip, he’s pretty sure she writes the school newspaper. Well, her and about ten other kids but she’s the good one. She’s got scholarships for her writing.

And she’s looking back at a now awake Peter.

“Watch your language, eh, Lizzie?” The teacher warns half-heartedly but someone who assigns them busywork for an hour block class isn’t truly that worried with cussing.

The two of them are locking eyes and whatever she’s got pulled up on her phone has to do with Peter and for a moment Ned’s terrified it’s about Spiderman. 

“Sorry, Mr. Lacruz.” She mumbles something to the girl beside her and they both gasp and share the article between themselves.

Ned looks at Peter, who’s paling with each passing moment.

“Mr. Lacruz, can I go to the bathroom?” Peter’s already out of his chair and snatching the generic bathroom pass off of the wall before the man even looks up to give Peter a bored nod. 

Ned stands, only glances at Mr. Lacruz who seems unbothered by the fact that his class is now distracted from their work. “What is it?”

The girl turns to him, he’s had classes with her before. She’s brilliant but when you compare everything else to her writing that’s where her talent is. Whatever her phone has informed her of, she doesn't seem happy about just rather unpleasant and worried.

“Tony Stark got hurt on a mission this weekend.” She looks down at her phone,” he had a heart attack.”

 

 

The Reactor is out. Peter runs into the room, his breath coming out in quick pants, and he sees Tony on his back, the reactor sitting to the side.

“No,” panic starts bubbling up. 

“Peter!” Bruce runs into the room and takes him around the shoulders. Pulling him away from Tony and stifling the yelling and sobs Peter didn’t even know were coming out of his mouth. “Peter, listen to me-”

He’d left for school that morning only because Bruce promised, he swore that Tony would be fine. That Tony would be fine, he’d be awake and alert by the time Peter got back. That getting out of the hospital would be good for him.

“He’s alive, I swear.” Bruce pulls him to his chest, Peter can’t even conjure up tears. “He woke up and he had a panic attack. He had a minor episode, they had to shock him. There was residual energy trapped in the Reactor.”

Peter’s minimal understanding of the Reactor doesn’t allow for Bruce to make as much sense as he means to but he tries. He knows how the reactor stops the metal shards in Tony’s chest from impaling and shredding through his heart muscles. He gets that. 

“B-But the metal…” he can’t- he wants back into the room. He wants to hear the machines measuring out Tony’s life. He wants to hear the hiss of the canal, the shudder of breath out of Tony’s mouth, and the small noises that he makes as he sleeps. He wants to feel and see that Tony is alive.

“The shrapnel is being monitored and contained by a magnet resting in the sheet they have covering the hole the reactor left. It’s like surgical gauze. He shouldn’t get an infection but they have to monitor him closely for another hour because his chest cavity is very susceptible to infections right now.” Bruce is always groaning about how he’s not a real doctor, how his skills are more to do with chemicals, not physical wounds. 

Still, as he stands, comforting Peter, he understands why everyone trusts him to heal them.

“Can I see him?”

“No one would ever stop you.”

This time Tony’s awake, turned over on his side and staring at the empty seat. “I-I thought I was in Afghanistan… I dreamt I was there again.”

Peter slowly approaches the extra chair, afraid that his mentor won’t even be able to recognize him. He sits slowly, afraid to scare him if he comes over too quickly. Tony’s drug-hazed brown eyes stare at Peter and he can see the confusion deeply rooted in his mentor’s foggy brain. 

“Peter?” Tony moves his left hand away from his hip and reaches out to gently touch Peter’s knee,” Pete, I really don’t wanna go there again.” Tony’s head is bent funny, laying at an angle on the pillow that Peter knows is going to pull at his back funny. He knows the reactor has caused several of Tony’s muscles to be severed, shortened, and damaged. So he stands up and tries to coax Tony to lay differently. 

As gently as he can, unsure of how far up to lift or how to hold him, Peter puts his arms under Tony’s head and lifts. Tony doesn’t protest which surprises peter the most. If anything at all, Tony seems perfectly content and watches Peter’s face as Peter moves him farther on to the center of the bed. 

“I-I don’t…” Tony’s eyes start to drop shut.

Peter lays his mentor down as gently as he can, sliding his arms back out from underneath Tony with gentle ease. “Shh, you’re not going back to Afganistan, Tony. You’re never going back.”

Tony’s eyes center on Peter for a moment and the fear and agony is so clear and horrifying that Peter’s heartaches. “Pete, you were there. I couldn’t- you just- I’m so sorry, Pete.” His eyelids slide shut and Peter stands, just as he is, bent over his mentor. 

His goatee is greyer than usual. The hairs around his temple are grey but it’s progressed downward. Now the grey hair has streaked back farther, it’s all the way back now, grey streaks from his forehead to the very back of his head. 

He’s getting old. 

 

 

“Hey Spider-butt,” the white of Tony’s t-shirt does nothing to provide some color to Tony’s face. If anything the white sucks the very life from the older man and given the shaky legs that Tony’s standing on, there’s not all that much strength left. 

Hairs on the back of his neck stand up and Peter can feel unease with every atom of his body. “You shouldn’t be down here.” It comes out way too chocked full of authority for Peter to feel comfortable with the sentence but Tony just smiles all crooked at him. 

“My garage isn’t it?” Tony slumps into the wall, tilting his head up.

Peter can see the sweat across Tony’s brow and although he knows Tony is going to hate it and he knows he’s treading quickly into uncharted territory but he steps in beside Tony. Without hesitation, he’s got an arm around Tony’s side and he guides him effortlessly to the couch by the side of the wall. 

“M fine,” he mumbles only once he’s laid back on the couch and aware of Peter sitting on the floor, watching him. 

“Well, our definitions of ‘fine’ are very different.” 

Tony sighs and Peter can hear the exhaustion… mentally and physically. 

“I’m sorry, I-”

“No,” Tony doesn't sit up but he does open his eyes and look up to the ceiling. “You’re right and… and I’m sorry. I’m… I can’t sleep. I’m losing it and I justify it all by saying that I’m protecting you and Pepper but I’m just…”

Peter stands up, aware of the guilt that’s laced into his mentor’s words, and embraces the man. He can feel the thud of Tony’s heart against his chest and he’s forgotten what it’s like hug Tony. The sharp metal and cold smooth reactor shouldn’t be something easily forgotten but Peter has managed to forget it.

“You’re like an adult now,” Tony breathes, his hand coming to rest on the back of Peter’s head. “When did you get so big, Pete?”

Peter smiles into Tony’s shoulder,” you’re so soppy sometimes. Such a dad.”

Tony smiles too,” yeah? Well, then don’t do stuff that my kid would do.”

They share a small laugh and a knowing silence afterward. 

“To...D-Dad?”

Tony’s heart skips a dangerous beat,” y-yeah, buddy?”

“Please don’t die. Not anytime soon,” there are hot tears pressed into the crook of Tony’s neck and pulls Peter down and sits up a little. 

“Pete, I’m going to live so long that when I do die you’re going to be so glad that I’m off your back. You’re-”

“I’m going to be devasted,” Peter mumbles and there are new tears streaming down his face.

Tony nods,” and-and I’ll miss you too.”


End file.
